


At the End of All Things

by atlas_white



Series: Bad Days are Coming [1]
Category: Half-Life
Genre: Angst, Drowning, F/M, Mouth-to-Mouth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-16 01:57:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17540468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlas_white/pseuds/atlas_white
Summary: The escape from City 17 had gone so well, until it all fell apart with the sound of a train derailing and crashing into the river. The next thing Alyx knew, Gordon was nowhere to be found.





	At the End of All Things

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt for bingo: Alyx/Gordon, CPR, requested by DrDadster.  
> (Request [here](https://atlas-white.tumblr.com/post/182223359026/im-doing-a-fanfic-bingo-card-so-requests-are-open))
> 
> An alternate take on the opening of EP2.

 

  
It had been such a fantastic escape— until it hadn't.

  
Alyx would remember laughing as they watched City 17 grow farther away, the train carrying them briskly away to safety. She would remember looking at Gordon, her heart swelling with fondness for that brave, beautiful, incredible man. Then she would remember the explosion, the deafening boom like thunder over her head, the flash of white as the unstable core gave up at last, and just like that, an entire city ceased to exist. Then there was shaking, there was a bridge, there was a climactic **_CRACK_ **of wood splitting, twisting, falling away.

Just like they were falling away.

Then the next thing she knew, she was in a train car at a very dramatic incline. She must have been knocked out for a moment or two, because she was waking, sitting up, and her head hurt. It didn't look like much time had passed, not much at all. The sun was still out, the sky a shade of blue that seemed impossible after so much time under the grey of the ruptured and war-ravaged city.

Alyx had this thought that it was pretty nice, that sky. It was the sort of distant thought one has when finding herself on her back on a bench in a wrecked train car, looking out an open door at a clear sky unlike any she'd seen in years.

"Hey, Gordon, look..." she said, gesturing vaguely towards that endless sky.

She didn't really expect a reply. With his hearing being what it was, Gordon rarely gave a reply to anything, at least verbally. She'd have to look over at him to see what he thought. He might not even be awake yet himself; he always did take his time getting up, didn't he?

It was when she turned to look at him that she realized that he wasn't there at all.

"Gordon?" Alyx repeated, sitting bolt upright. She looked around, suddenly completely aware and not thinking of the goddamn sky at all. Her heart began to race immediately. Her only thought was that Gordon wasn't here, and she needed to find him, fast.

"Gordon, where are you?"

She searched the car quickly, her worry growing and changing its shape until it became fear, and that fear weighed her down like a stone tied round her neck. He wasn't here. He wasn't here. _He wasn't here._

At once, her mind went to the worst possibilities— she saw him falling out of the train, the full weight of a car careening towards him, that hazard suit could take a beating but it couldn't keep him from being crushed by at least  _thirty tonnes of steel._

How could she have been so _careless?_ He was counting on her. He was the savior of mankind, the One Free Man. He was her best friend. She was supposed to keep him safe, to see him through the trials on the road to freedom. They were supposed to get through this,  _together._

She shook her head harshly and climbed out through the door bent permanently open. This was ridiculous. He was fine, he had to be fine. He had taken care of himself in her absence, had stood alone before the Combine and come out of it victorious, proud and so wonderfully alive. She just had to find him and reunite with him, she would see that this still was so.

She called for him repeatedly as she hurried from her car to another, climbing with practiced ease across it to the ground, checking through the windows as she went for a sign of the telltale orange of the suit that would show her where its master was.

With every second that passed, her fear whipped more and more into terror, into panic, her projected scenarios becoming heart-stopping reality the longer they were not proven false. Surely the reason she could not find Gordon in one of the cars was because he had fallen out, because he was underneath one of them, because he wasn't there to be found.

Her calls became quickly more desperate, thick as she fought back tears that threatened to cloud her vision and make it difficult to spot him. She had never felt this helpless before.

 

She found the Gravity Gun before she found him. It was lying on a bank by the river in front of one of the crashed train cars, and at once she was picking it up, she was running for car next to it, her heart in her throat.

The car was upside-down, the benches hanging down, the wheels still turning futilely overhead. It was half-submerged, but she could see that blessed orange through a ruined window before she got close enough to bend down and look inside, a beacon against the cold greys and browns of the train and the river. Her search had ended.

Yet, when she set eyes on him, Alyx's heart stopped. Her body went cold, her life ended and her hopes were utterly destroyed.

There he was, Gordon Freeman, lying face-down in the water on what was once the ceiling of the train, blood sticky on his brow. He was utterly still, the HEV suit helpless to protect him against this most banal of threats.

A scream tore from Alyx an instant before she was tearing open the door, dropping the Gravity Gun in the water, she was running to him, gripping his shoulders, dragging his prone form out of the car and out onto the shore where she'd found her father's invention, her heart in her throat and her guts twisting painfully. He was so pale.

She couldn't check his pulse through the HEV suit, but she could check for a sign that he was breathing. She put her ear near his nose and mouth and held her own breath as she waited.

And there came... nothing.

He wasn't breathing.

Alyx's whole world was falling apart.

She had to bite back a sob. There was work to do; she couldn't let it end like this. _It could not end like this_.

She gently tilted back his head and eased his mouth open. There didn't seem to be any water in it. She pinched his nose, took a deep breath, and then covered his mouth with her own. She counted in her head, one, two, three, take another deep breath and breathe into him again, she'd learned how to do this from her father but that had been years ago, a decade, a lifetime. She was terrified she might be meant to start chest compressions now. No, that was if his heart wasn't beating. Was his heart beating? Was he already—

She leaned down and listened for his breathing again, but still she found nothing. There was no movement, nothing. She covered his mouth again and breathed into him, desperately urging him all the while to just breathe. He was so small. He was so still.

One, two, three. Try again. Fill Gordon's lungs again with her own breath until he could make it his own. His mouth was cold and it felt so wrong feeling nothing coming up from it. It should have been full of breath and life, warm and smiling, oh, how could she have failed him so completely?

Alyx listened for breathing again and still there was nothing. She tried again, tears mingling with the water on her face. One, two, three, breathe into him four times, check for signs of life. His body just refused to accept it, oh it was tired, it was ready to give up but Alyx wasn't, she couldn't, Gordon was too important.

She tried a fifth set, checked for breathing, a sixth, she was crying so hard by now, she was begging him to breathe, to wake up, her voice thin and hoarse. "Please, Gordon, _please!_ I need you! Gordon, please, I can't _lose_ you, I _can't!"_

She pinched his nose again, harder without meaning to, and breathed into him yet again. And still, there was nothing. There was nothing. Alyx took another deep breath and sobbed into his open mouth, and once she was done, as if the effort overwhelmed her, she slipped down, curled over him and pressed her forehead against his armored chest.

And all was silent, save for her weeping. Unabashed, sharp and loud in the small space, it was a wailing like the damned, but what else was she but damned herself? In a heartbeat she had lost all that mattered, she had felt the life slip out of Gordon between her fingers and now all she had left to hold was his body while she _grieved_.

His body was still, his suit silent, his glasses nowhere to be seen. He seemed so small, so defeated. A sacrifice; broken in the hour of his victory. It was too cruel.

 

When the sound of a cough wrenched into the air, it caught Alyx by surprise, and she jerked back with a sharp gasp, alert in spite of her brokenness. She looked at the face of the body in her arms and found it scrunched up and reddened as Gordon coughed roughly and choked up water.

"Gordon?"

He managed to nod as he pushed himself up into a sitting position, carrying on coughing as he did so, spitting up a little more water and taking deep, rough, greedy breaths as he tried to coax his lungs into working normally again. He was shaking slightly, but he seemed to be recovering on his own now, remarkable as ever.

So wonderfully alive.

Alyx gave a cry of excitement that she had no words for, a sound that came out half-sob as it tore out of her, and she pulled him against herself before she even realized what she was doing, too swept up in emotion to hesitate. That coughing was the sweetest sound she had ever heard in her life. Choirs of angels couldn't compare to it, to the joy and relief and exultation that it brought her unequaled by anything she had ever known.

Gordon gave a soft huff, even though her arms couldn't squeeze him through the HEV suit. He managed to steady himself enough to nod and, at length, he put his arms around her in return, and rested his head against Alyx's shoulder.

"Gordon, I was so scared," Alyx whispered, close to his ear. "I was so sure that I had lost you, I... oh, Gordon..."

He rubbed her back reassuringly, comforting her as if she had been the one to brush with death. He turned his head just so and kissed her hair, feather-light, as if he'd loved her all his life.

So it happened that Alyx didn't stop herself before she turned her own head and kissed his mouth as if she had known him since time began. It felt so different from giving him mouth to mouth, so natural and soothing. He tasted like the river water that had almost claimed him, but also sweet like something implacable, something that belonged only to Gordon.

As she kissed him, she almost didn't realize that he wasn't letting go.

When she did, she pulled back just enough to look into his eyes, green as soft as moss, and find there only affection, endless, deepest gratitude and an admiration that she felt so unworthy of that it made her flush. So she kissed him again, and felt his weary arms pull her even closer, as if she were the only thing keeping him alive.

The feeling was completely mutual.

 

 

 

 


End file.
